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10/27/2011 @ 11:26AM588 views

China's Aching Lapses in Healthcare

The West bows to China’s prowess constantly, but when a native Chinese himself points out serious shortcomings in the nation’s rise, it’s a reality tonic.

Yanzhong Huang, now an associate professor at the Whitehead Diplomacy and International Relations School at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, lays out the gaps in healthcare that still make China “The Sick Man of Asia” in a lengthy, so-titled article in the latest issue of the prestigious Foreign Affairs bimonthly. (It’s available behind a paywall here.) For Americans who grouse over their own system’s lapses, this is useful context.

Huang, who was born in Zhenjiang and got his early degrees at Fudan University, traces the helter-skelter pattern of government medical-care programs since Mao’s Cultural Revolution. His key damning metric: Between 1981 and 2009, average Chinese life expectancy grew by only five years, while in nations that started the period with a similar statistic (68 years) and had slower economic growth (including South Korea and Malaysia), the average rose by 7-14 years.

Although overall national subsidies for care have rebounded from a dip earlier in the process of China’s de-Communization, and Beijing has zeroed in on dangerous epidemics like H1N1 bird flu, significant voids persist. Huang notes that “of the more than 26 million Chinese who suffer from depression, just 10% receive any medical treatment.” This may help to explain the recurrent incidents of bizarre antisocial violence including attacks on children, as well as a suicide rate that the author says is twice that of the U.S. (Although I’m not sure which is worse, that or the growing overprescription of antidepressants in the U.S.)

Meantime, environmental or behavioral aspects of China’s relative unhealthiness persist. Huang notes that cigarette smoking is still widely accommodated in public and observes that “China’s [state-monopoly] tobacco industry [is] a pillar of many provinces’ economies.”

Hospitals remain a weak link in China’s care strategy, Huang writes. In the mixed economy that is China today, the government continues to dominate the hospital sector and, though private operators keep trying to establish niches, theirs can be a frustrating initiative.

Paradoxically, China is actively developing a medical sector, including biotech, that is creating a number of high-performing companies and personal fortunes. This, naturally, is leading Western companies to want to partner there. Yet, like India, China is proving for now to be a better laboratory for products than it is for medical practice.

The world wishes Chinese good health. China, in turn, needs its own better policies, priorities and precepts to allow its people’s condition to improve.

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Apparently, Huang knows what he says, highlighting the predicaments of Chinese weak healthcare system that leaves much room for improvement. Beijing has to focus on beefing up its number of qualified medical personnel in all domains instead of concentrating on effort to manufacture more medical products. Healthy people with sound minds are the crucial element for a harmonious nation.

Come to think of it, what is the point of having longer life expectancy when the nation is facing threatening problems due to fast growing ageing population? (vzc1943)

Tim, this healthcare piece is priceless. Why? because China healthcare to me is the next gold rush, albeit frustrating, but huge. The only thing worse than a billion people that don’t have enough to eat, is a billion people that languish in poor health.

If China’s path to growth in the last 20 years was keep them feed and working, then the next 40 years will be keep them healthy and buying stuff.

I’ve read some on this topic more market size numbers in this piece on Asia Healthcare blog http://bit.ly/tZgdYa From bed pans to MRI’s China’s health delivery system will be a huge opportunity. If I was smart (and I’m admittedly a little weak in this area) and without five kids, I’d find a way to get in this industry and move there. I see Ms. Carmosky was a contributor to the article and I follow her as well.